Narrative theory

We applied the theories ideas to The Shining(1980).
Propp was a Russian critic who examined 100s examples of folk tales and identified 8 character roles and 31 narrative functions. Propp's theory can be applied to all kinds of basic narratives However, this theory doesn't quite fit with The Shining. A few of character roles and narrative functions do fit with The Shining although they cannot be applied without a push.

For example, in The Shining, the hero/victim can either be Wendy or Danny. The villian could be Jack, the hotel itself, the old lady in the bath and the apparition. Besides, the donor is Halloran as he came to the hotel nearer the end to save Wendy and Danny. The helper in this movie can either be Halloran or Tony. The princess role (or sought-for person) is complicated to define as if Wendy is the victim, the Danny would be the princess role, or it would become the other way round. The false hero can also be Hallorann because he came to save the victims, however, he is killed by Jack. In this movie, a dispatcher role doesn't exist.

We then applied the 31 narrative functions to the film and we discovered that only the first four functions in the preparation part work with The Shining. At the begining for preparation, Jack and his family leave home to the hotel, a prohibition is set which they were told not to enter the room 237 but Danny attempted to get into the room. Jack then tried to convince Wendy that there is nothing in room 237 which fit point4. For the complication part, most of the functions work. For example, Jack was getting mad at Wendy and Danny was hurt after he entered room 237. They both wanted to go home however Jack doesn't want to leave the hotel. The seeker which is Wendy plans an action against Jack where she was trying to protect herself in the bathroom with a knife. For the transference, the victims are tested as Jack was trying to kill Danny and Wendy, however they received a helper/donor to offer them a snowtruck. The victims then transfered to a location which was the maze outside the hotel and Danny was hiding away from Jack in the maze. For the struggle part, only the point 'the villian is defeated' works with the movie. The rest of the narrative functions do not work the movie so Propp's theory doesn't really tell us much about the movie.

The second theorist that we looked at was Todorov. Todorov was a Bulgarian structuralist linguist publishing influential work on narrative from the 1960s. He suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium or status quo and this is disrupted, which is the disequilibrium, by some chains of events. Problems then solved into a new equilibrium so the order can be restored to the world of the fiction. Most of the classic Hollywood films are based on Todorov's ideas. This theory does fit with The Shining. The equilibrium is the normal life the family had before they moved to the hotel, then an engima raised when something happened to Jack to make him become mad. The disquilibrium was when Danny and Wendy were against Jack and the problems was solved and becomes the new equilibrium which was Wendy and Danny left the hotel and ends the film. I think that this theory helped me to understand the story of The Shining more than Propp's narrative function theory.

The third theory that we applied to The Shining was Binary Opposite. Levi looked at the narrative structure in terms of Binary opposite which are sets of opposite values which reveal the structure of media texts. For example, Good and Evil, Humans and Aliens. This theory works with The Shining, good and evil which is Jack (villian) and Wendy and Danny (victims).Known and unknown which is the apparition from the past and the family. The past and the present, what happened in the past comes back to the present which is when Jack saw the people in the ballroom and the old lady in the bath in room237, and Danny saw the two girls murdered in the corridor. Normal and strange which links to Jack being the strange character in the movie and Wendy and Danny being the normal characters who are against Jack. I think that this theory fits the film well. The last theory that we applied to The Shining was Bordwell and Thompson's theory. They defined narrative as 'a chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, ocurring in time and space.' Whilst not creating a full theory of narrative, they put together some very interesting ideas. For them, a narrative typically begins with one situation, a series of changes occur according to a pattern of cause and effect, finally a new situation arises that brings the end of the narrative. Cause and effect take place in time. As we watch a film, we try to put events in chronologiacal order and allow them duration and frequency.

According to Bordwell and Thompson, there are 3 distinctions of time within a film;

screen duration, which is one and a half hour for The Shining.

plot duration, which we think is 6 months.

story duration, which is 60 years because at the end, there was a picture which was taken in 1920, but the story started in the 1980.

I think that time is very important in this film because it makes the audience confuse about time and even the characters. For example, in the very beginning scene, Jack asked Wendy what time it was which suggested that he is confused and he is not too organised with his job. Later in the movie, a lot of events from the past started to appear in the scenes which make the audience think about the relationship between the past and the present. For example, the party in the ballroom, and specially the picture at the end of Jack in his waitor outfit which confused the time in this movie.